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less / less.js

Less. The dynamic stylesheet language.
http://lesscss.org
Apache License 2.0
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dual-licence question #1029

Closed jeff-h closed 6 years ago

jeff-h commented 11 years ago

Would you consider releasing LESS under GPL v2 (or something compatible with it, such as MIT), as well as the existing Apache 2?

The three big open source CMS's — WordPress, Joomla and Drupal — are all GPL2 only and thus can't incorporate this library easily, instead requiring users to manually come to github or http://lesscss.org and download it, and install it separately, which ultimately reduces adoption.

splitbrain commented 9 years ago

Any progress being made here? Any way the community could help?

matthew-dean commented 9 years ago

@splitbrain Is there anything that needs to happen?

splitbrain commented 8 years ago

@matthew-dean well... this ticket is still open. I think others here (and in linked tickets) have made clear that the Apache License is problematic when working with other Open Source licenses.

What needs to happen are the following things I believe:

ghost commented 8 years ago

I support the LGPL.

kryptine commented 8 years ago

Some thoughts:

  1. Firstly, the primary reason for license change is that Apache License 2.0 is not compatible with GPLv2. Therefore any other license not compatible with GPLv2 must not be used unless accompanied by another, GPLv2-compatible, license:

    1. GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 or later
    2. Eclipse Public License version 1.0

    For a detailed list, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

  2. One of the commentator, @ionas, suggested using the LGPL (version 2 only or version 2 and later, not version 3 or later or version 3 only) instead of the MIT license. His/her arguments certainly have merits: He/she wants people modifying the LESS software to also share and license their modifications as free software. However, I would like to present my case for MIT:
    1. The LGPL requires supplying a copy of the license with every copy of the software program (really, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.html#WhyMustIInclude and this applies to the LGPL as well). On this issue, a commentator mentioned a use case in which the LESS scripts are sent to the client's browser for local rendering. Since the LGPL is significantly larger than the MIT license (26 kB instead of 1 kB), distributing the license along with the script is a huge waste of bandwidth. For larger, infrequently downloaded software packages this is not an important problem, but for web pages (where minifiers are often used) the problem is much more significant. (Also, the LGPL counts minified JS as binary.) The original copyright holder can just add a "This program is free software..." notice, but subsequent redistributors must include the full license.
    2. I don't think that the LGPL (or other weak-copyleft licenses, such as the Mozilla Public License) will give "the free/open-source software community" much benefit in this case. With the LGPL, if proprietary developers decide to modify LESS and distribute it they will have to license their changes as LGPL too, yes. But they don't have to use LESS. They have alternatives. For example Sass is licensed under MIT and is also a CSS preprocessor, they can use that. You will have to convince them to switch to LGPL. And everyone else who distributes permissively-licensed software too. The history of copyleft vs. permissive is long; there have been many debates about "which license is better?" But I am going to give my opinion here: Free-riders aren't necessary a problem — if they choose to do things by themselves (write their own code from scratch or choose an alternative) we are not going to gain anything either. We don't expect hurricane victims to "recompensate" us for the donations we gave them. LESS is not a free software project created to promote free software, it is an open source project created to scratch itches. I would like to see the greatest freedom granted to the greatest number of people possible (a derivative fork does not reduce your freedom pertaining to the original software)
    3. If you go for LGPL now and later want to switch to MIT, you will have to find and ask the contributors two times: first for LGPL, second for MIT. However, if you go for MIT now and later want to switch to LGPL, you only need to ask for permissions once. The reasons are obvious: MIT being much more permissive than LGPL, switching from MIT to LGPL is to reduce the existing rights. Switching in the opposite direction is adding more rights, and therefore will require asking for permissions again. Since license compatibility is the principal reason for this, it is much more important than the perennial debate about the merits and shortcomings of copyleft vs. permissive, and we want to get this done first. We can always change our mind if we go for MIT now. (Instead of LGPL and MIT, the same applies to more permissive and less permissive licenses)
stale[bot] commented 6 years ago

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.